VicGov kickstarts cloud project

The new Cloud Technology Centre of Excellence set up by Melbourne IT companies Kloud Solutions and Chamonix will create almost 120 IT jobs.

Gordon Rich-Phillips, minister for technology in the Victorian state government, officially opened the new site in Melbourne's CBD on Wednesday. It was established by Silver Linings Group, a joint venture of technology specialists Kloud Solutions and business consultants Chamonix.

[Who was at the opening? Click here for photos]

Rich-Phillips said this was part of a mission to consolidate Victoria's place as a powerhouse in the IT industry.

It is part of VicGov's ICT Strategy, launched in February, which will see the government move to "a mix of insourced, managed and outsourced services that best meets the needs of government".

"The Government will achieve this by engaging with the ICT industry at the design stage to establish the feasibility, risk and cost effectiveness of technology solution options – which in turn will give the private sector more confidence in taking commercial risks in developing ICT solutions and services for the public sector," a government spokesperson told CRN.

It is unclear whether VicGov provided funding for the project; the minister's office told CRN this was "commercial in confidence."

However, the state government has supported the project.

"The department successfully worked with the company to locate them at a new centre in Victoria and also move their headquarters from Adelaide to Melbourne," said the minister.

The centre will help government, business and education customers transition to the cloud, including Microsoft Office 365, SharePoint, Lync and Yammer.

Other services include identity management, application development, cloud Infrastructure and managed services.

Nicki Bowers, managing director of Kloud, told CRN: "The Cloud Centre of Excellence provides 'customer immersion experience' sessions where customers contemplating projects can come and experience firsthand how the technologies we work with can transform their organisations."

Kloud and Chamonix have a combined 140 staff across four states. The new cloud centre should see that number rocket by as many as 117 new jobs in Victoria by 2015, including technical consultants, business consultants, systems engineers, service delivery and sales.

Bowers told guests at Wednesday's launch party that the Victorian government had been "instrumental" in setting up the centre.

One early corporate customer is Coles; the Silver Linings Group is in the process of rolling out a system for 100,000 staff members of the supermarket chain.

Other clients include Caltex, Seek and Bendigo Bank.